


You Can't Cross The Same River Twice

by Moonsheen



Category: Pyre (Video Game)
Genre: Backstory, Flash Fic, Gen, Ghosts, Missing Scene, Slight Oralech/Volfred, Slight Sandra/F!Reader, Spoilers, past trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-18
Updated: 2017-11-18
Packaged: 2019-02-04 00:53:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12759786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Moonsheen/pseuds/Moonsheen
Summary: There's an intruder in the blackwagon, and Sandra wants a word.





	You Can't Cross The Same River Twice

He steps into the wagon. The shelves are stocked full. The corners stacked with supplies and personal belongings. He would marvel at the strangeness of it, old and new to this place at once, but, as his hooves meet those familiar floorboards, the world as he knows it blurs, and he stops at the familiar chill on his back.

“Oh, my,” says a voice from the corner. A figure materializes, perched above the reading desk, her head tilted in Oralech’s direction. “You have the footsteps of that Emperor I failed to kill.”

“Phantom,” acknowledges Oralech, over his shoulder. “So, you remain.”

“I always remain,” says Sandra the Unseeing, crossing the distance on feet that do not touch the floor. Where she moves, the floorboards are no longer floorboards, but the tanned flesh of a dead star beast. The walls are no longer walls, but an explosive night sky. “And so, it seems, do you, Oralech the Traitor. I would say that I have missed you, but I miss no one, and you were always very boring.”

“And I am too tired to care whether you do or not,” says Oralech. He turns at her approach, behind him are the walls of the blackwagon, ahead of him is an empty page, a death-white flame flickering in the distance. He stares blankly ahead. “You are bound by your rules.”

Sandra laughs. It echoes from all corners of the wagon. It echoes from all corners of this illusory night.

“Am I? You are here for the purpose of the Rites. You seek the Reader. You seek clarity. And you are, till the end of your time, a Nightwing. So I am well within the tiny breadth of authority allowed to me by those damnable Scribes to appear before you. Tell me, demon, what do you want with my lovely Reader?”

“My business with Volfred is of no concern to you.”

“Oh? You mean the _last_ one? Hah!” Sandra tilts her head. If she had eyes, she would be rolling them famously. “As though I have any interest in a lover’s spat. No, not YOUR Reader, I am talking about mine.”

Oralech shoves his hands into his sleeves. He doesn’t quite growl.

“My business with Volfred’s shadow is of no concern to you.”

“Your business with her is _everything_ to me,” she says.

Oralech raises an eyebrow.

“Since when has it mattered to you, which Reader is which?”

“Since this one is _mine_ ,” says Sandra, simply.

“You have favorites, now?”

“Are we making this personal after all? Good. I so hoped we would." She advances on Oralech. Oralech doesn’t move. The wraith is smaller than him, but he can sense the movement in the corners of the starry sky behind her. The bound Sisters of the Arch, arrayed and watching, waiting. “Let me tell you how I expect this to go. You will say your piece, if you think you’ve grown less droning since you gained the horns. Or, you will lay a hand on her and live an eternity of regret. I have that, you know, an eternity. One comes up with so many interesting ideas, given a century, or two, or three. Or _eight_...”

A celestial orb lands between them. Sandra puts her foot on it. Her hair and her robes prickle from the energy of it. Oralech drums his fingers and remains unmoved. He knows it’s the wagon behind him. He knows there’s no orb, no pyre, no truth to any of this.

“Hmph. Assumptions. You are not the only one who tires of the game. What could you do to me that has not already been done?” asks Oralech. “Your form is incorporeal, and your duties set. You are a function of the Rites, phantom, and nothing more. I am a Nightwing, as you have said. I have passed your tests, and every other set before me. None of you have any claim to me.”

Sandra raises a finger and shook it from side to side, clicking her tongue.

“So forceful! It almost makes you interesting. But let me remind you: You are yet untested in _this_ form. And, since we are on the subject of our duties,  allow me to administer to you a trial,” says Sandra. She lifts her arm outwards to her side. A mask materializes in it. She places it over her face, and her form shifts, her sleeves shivering, furling and unfurling: The robes representing the figure of the Rope-Caller, draped over a taller, broader form. She pulls the mask back up from her face.

Erisa grins crookedly under it.

“Hey, Doc,” she says.

Oralech stares. His pupils dilate. His hair prickles.  He takes a sharp breath.

The phantom Erisa laughs, her smile is wide and toothy -- exactly as in life. “Watch your step. It’s one hell of a drop.”

Oralech surges forward. His arm lashes out.

His hand stops over the Beyonder Crystal, just short of striking it, claws splayed. The crystal sits on the reading table, untouched. He is alone in the wagon. There are no stars. There is no vellum under foot. He can hear the wheels creak and the drive imps hard at work. There are no stars. There are no stars.

A voice in his ear echoes: “...and should you not show her the restraint you showed just now, you will never rest another night for the rest of your short, miserable life.”

The chill fades. Oralech steps back and drops his hand in his side.

“As though I sleep,” he mutters. He gives the table a shove with his hoof. The Crystal rolls off the edge and onto the pile of books below, out of sight. There is a table across from the door. Oralech sits at it. He rests his shaking hand across the scratched surface. He waits.

He’s gotten very good at that.


End file.
